This month!
- We've started our first friends and family playtest. Currently it includes 1 level, 2 characters, 4 enemies, and a bunch of towers and upgrades.
- We've created level 2 & 3 and started developing the UI to not just be basic boxes.
- Gameplay: We've moved towards around 12 towers and revamped the early Towers to get them to the quality level we can support.
- Narrative: First story implemented, second story close to being implemented. Updated our Visual Novel code to support our writers better.
- Creative: We've concepted and starting modeling up to about tower 16. We've also brainstormed out about 50 possible towers and dozens of particle effects to choose the best from.
- Engineering: A lot of performance improvements for resources and particles. Started investigating Friendshipper (an open source git implementation for UE5) that will help us scale the team if successful.

Hopeful Future Timeline (but we'll delay to make a better game if necessary):
July: Leveling Up Towers, More Content (Towers, Upgrades, Bosses), Augment System, Limited Invites via Discord to join a playtest.
August: Accessibility and Tutorial Features, All of Discord invited to join the playtest through a signup form.
September: Wider playtest on Steam.
October: Steam Next Fest
November: Launch Early Access
November - December: Launch v1.0 (we want a very short EA period, mostly as a way to hash out all the bugs before we go to full launch)

Feb/March: Secondary Launch Timeframe if we need more time. (We want to make the best game possible for you all!)

To our community,

Thank you so much for buying our games! To give back for your support, we’re offering credits to all players who made purchases in Starsiege: Deadzone or TRIBES 3 in the past:

• If you made any purchases in Starsiege: Deadzone or TRIBES 3 before June 27, 2024, you’ll receive credits towards our new game, Ultra Strikers.

• For every dollar you spent on Starsiege: Deadzone or TRIBES 3 before June 27, 2024, you’ll receive a dollar in credits towards Ultra Strikers. For example, if you spent $10 in Starsiege: Deadzone, and $20 in TRIBES 3, you’d receive $30 in credits to use towards Ultra Strikers.

• The credits will take into account all purchases you made on Starsiege: Deadzone or TRIBES 3 before June 27, 2024, including base purchases of the games, season passes, cosmetics, etc.

• For past purchases in foreign currencies, the credit amount towards Ultra Strikers will be matched 1:1 in the same currency (with conversion applied if needed). 

Credits towards Ultra Strikers will be granted to the Steam account that was used to make purchases in Starsiege: Deadzone or TRIBES 3, at a later time. You do not need to take any action at this time to receive your credits towards the new game. As Ultra Strikers nears launch, we’ll provide more detail on how the credits can be used for Ultra Strikers purchases.

—

These credits are meant to give back to players who supported us in early development. We’re doing our best to support TRIBES 3 with limited updates (along with an upcoming discount sale to bring in more players), and plan to return to Starsiege Deadzone once the company has the resources, but unfortunately neither game had enough success yet to support the studio and can’t be our main development focus right now (as much as we love them).

Thank you for your support. Going forward, we’ll continue to focus on updating existing games as much as we can, while creating new games players enjoy. We love making games, we love playing games, and thanks again for giving our games a shot and being part of the community!

- Prophecy Games

In the spirit of Early Access, we continue to improve and evolve the Rogue’s Gallery content into a more complete experience.

Previously, it was not obvious in the game that defeating each rogue opponent not only unlocked the next opponent but also unlocked use of that rogue’s character as your in-game avatar. When used as an avatar, that character’s animations appear in the left hand portrait during matches and you can express yourself using that character’s collection of Smacktalk emotes.

With this update, we’ve made it a little more challenging to unlock each rogue’s avatar. Moving forward, a simple defeat of a Rogues’ Gallery opponent will unlock the next opponent and earn you a Steam Achievement, but to unlock a rogue’s avatar for your own use, you must defeat the rogue 3 times in a row in the Rogues’ Gallery. (Sparring matches don’t count).

To track your win streaks, each rogue portrait in the Rogues’ Gallery lobby is now decorated with 3 stars. With a win streak of one, one of these stars will be lit yellow, and the others gray. When all three are yellow, the rogue’s avatar becomes permanently unlocked and you also get a Prize Card (see below). Note that this requires a 3 game win streak, not merely 3 wins. If you lose or concede a game against a rogue, your win streak against that rogue will reset to zero, and all that rogue’s stars will become gray again.



Once you’ve unlocked some rogue avatars, you can switch to a new avatar using the User Settings popup that can be opened on the home screen.

Prize Cards are a new addition this release. A Prize Card is very similar to a Steam Achievement, except they are unique to Squirmish and signify accomplishments that also unlock important items or features. Plus, although they have no in-game effect, they look just like other Squirmish cards.

A PRIZES section has been added in the CARDS area of the game, next to COLLECTION, DECKS, and MINI-DECKS. All awarded prize cards can be browsed in this section, and you can examine each of them they same way you examine any other Squirmish card. Each will explain what you accomplished to earn the card, and what prize was unlocked by it. Each prize card even even has its own "battle cry".

The first block of Prize Cards are awarded for accomplishing a challenging win streak against a rogue, and each one unlocks the rogue avatar pictured on the card.



If you’ve already defeated some or all of the Rogues’ Gallery opponents prior to this update, you’ll find that you’ve been spotted one victory against each rogue that you’ve already defeated.

• Fixed a bug with FOXY LION’s SLY & STEALTHY ability. When controlled by a bot, SLY & STEALTHY would sometimes make an illegal move if OLD MAN EGGPLANT’s AUBERGINE LIMOUSINE was activated before it on the same turn.
  
• Fixed a bug with DAMAGEBOT 2000’s AUTO INJURY ability. AUTO INJURY was triggering on attack damage (and potentially absorbing it) when DAMAGEBOT was at zero HP.

• FOXY LION
  
• DAMAGEBOT 2000

Fixed a pistol prop animation bug

Todays hotfix consists of more fixes to achievements as well as fixes for VR.

If you play in VR and are having issues with the controls, menus, etc; Please reach out and contact us through our website, email, Discord, or fill out the Early Access Survey with as much detail as possible.

WMR COMPATIBILITY:
We understand that users who use WMR compatible headsets may be experiencing issues with launching. Windows Mixed Reality has been considered deprecated by Microsoft and will be discontinued by 2026. We recommend upgrading your headset by then. However, we are still investigating this issue because other WMR games still work at this time. We also don't own one of these headsets or have access to one so a fix for this may take a lot longer than expected. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Discord: https://discord.com/servers/r-a-v-e-community-732114766352351232


Early Access Survey: https://forms.gle/5j9zzwqjjCfYhWf79



Venue - The Black Box:
- Added Dance Battle areas.

VR:
- Adjusted position of HMD to be closer to the body.
- Fixed "Total Distance" achievements.

Venue Builder:
- Fixed "Total Distance" achievements.

Sitting Areas:
- Adjusted areas for multiple seats.

Meet Warz--the fallen Celestial.

Warz (voiced by Simu Liu), is a central figure in the Stormgate storyline and leads the Infernal invasion of Earth. He was revealed in playable form exclusively at gamescom latam during the opening night ceremony.

Warz will be playable for free up to level 5 in the 3P co-op mode when the game launches to to Steam Early Access on August 13. In the future, Warz will be playable in the upcoming 3v3 mode (currently in development and set to debut during Early Access).

Want to get into the game even earlier?
Visit the Stormgate page on Steam and pre-purchase any Early Access Pack to get in on July 30!

Pre-Recorded stream of me playing the sequel to DEATHWATCH, DEATHWATCHERS!

We hope you have all been enjoying the IRONHIVE Demo, and this first look at the game got you excited for more things to come. For us as developers, releasing anything is also exciting, but unavoidably fraught with worry. However, we've been blown away by the positive reception from all of you. That energy will now fuel our motivation and keep us going the rest of the way. Thank you for taking the time to play the Demo and leave invaluable feedback.

We would also like to highlight content creators which spread the word about IRONHIVE at a time when it needed the spotlight the most. Special thanks goes to Splattercatgaming, Wanderbots, and Retromation, whose coverage of IRONHIVE helped keep it growing.


That said, we are aware that this release revealed some issues, most notable of which is the game’s tutorial, which could definitely use some improvement.

Our initial plan was to stop offering the Demo by June 16th. However, thanks to the feedback you had all shared and the warm reception we’d got, we decided to change our course of action.

We will now be keeping the Demo up indefinitely and updating it in accordance with your feedback and our vision. Here are the core updates you can expect to start seeing as early as July:
And if you’d like to participate in future closed beta tests or just have the best place for providing feedback — join our Discord!



As we deal with the more pressing updates, we will start expanding the scope of what’s available in the Demo as well. No specific dates for now, but be prepared to venture outside of your IRONHIVE with the Points of Interest update and defend your home from sinister External Threats…

Ironlords, thank you for your continued support. You all deserve to spend more time in this world alongside us and see it grow together. With that, we are resuming work on the game and the Demo.

See you all again very soon.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2679070/IRONHIVE

Hello Drivers! An update for the workforce to fix a few issues that have been affecting our drivers work/life balance.

• Fixed 2 issues with the “Fill Er’ Up” achievement
  
• Panic is now only reduced by petting Acerola
  
• Increased panic gains from all sources
  
• Cleaned up some edge cases where passengers would have the wrong lines
  
• Verified all achievements are functional
  
• “Nope” achievement can now be gained from any ending except “You’re Fired”

We’d recommend checking out the community guides for help on some of the trickier achievements.

Also, stay tuned for other projects on our social media pages. Cool things are coming soon! Twitter or Tiktok

Hello everyone!

I wanted to take some time to showcase some of the recent progress and talk about some of the upcoming work for Clockwork Dawn. The recent focus has been on a new feature - Projects, and on refining diplomacy and the AI.


During a Clockwork Dawn campaign, a nation - especially one played by the player, begins to snowball in terms of resource production. The two major outlets that have existed for excess resources to be poured into are:

1. Overseas empire expansion
   
2. Army and navy expansion

I wanted to create a domestic alternative for countries to pour their excess resources as a counterpart to overseas empire expansion for countries that are not well situated to create a colonial empire (landlocked or on the interior of Europe). The solution for this has been Projects. Projects essentially act as large buildings with their own upgrades and a constant need for resources that output nation-wide bonuses. Two projects have been implemented so far - "The Municiperium" and "The Cognition Engine". The Municiperium takes food as the input resource and gives a population growth bonus while the Cognition Engine takes coal as the input resource and gives a bonus to research. To expand the projects, upgrades are available to be bought that increase the efficiency, max input resources, max output bonus, upgrade capacity, and more. The mechanics and UI for Projects have been built out so that more projects can be added through technology research and events.


To support more interactive and responsive AI, diplomacy has been expanded to more clearly show the relations between each country and the likelihood for countries to accept them. The AI has been given the capability to weigh diplomatic options and strategically pursue countries as friends or enemies. The way AI wages war has also been improved to more strategically choose provinces to siege, battles to start, and what provinces to attempt to wage war for.

There are a number of critical items that are being worked on to make the Early Access version of the game complete. Below is a short, but not anywhere near exhaustive list:

• Undersea colony construction
  
• Choosable social reforms
  
• Better handling of overseas empire by AI
  
• Better handling of building construction by AI
  
• Basic tutorial
  
• More events with larger outcomes
  
• More strategic AI pathing during war

In addition to this, the UI is always being worked on and improved to make Clockwork Dawn feel more alive and provide better information to players. More animations and a cohesive "look" of the game are a large part of this.

So that's all for now, many more fixes and minor improvements have been added that are too much to list here. Many thanks to everyone that is following the creation of Clockwork Dawn - it has come a long way in just a few months and getting closer to the goal imagined from the outset. Clockwork Dawn is now in the phase where the really interesting work can happen with worldbuilding and polishing. Excited for future!